We discussed the biggest trends that dominated social media in 2016 in a blog post a few weeks ago so this week we thought we would discuss some web design trends that we feel will play a prominent role within the industry for 2017. Feel free to leave a comment with your own ideas and we will add them to the post!

A Decline in Stock Photos – Stock photograph websites such as Pixabay are available to millions of website developers all over the world and with so many individuals using the same images, it can become difficult to offer original visual content that is unique. More and more companies are taking their own customer illustrations as these can set the tone of your site and really increase your brand’s presence.

Interface Animations – Arguably, this could be the most important of our predicted web design trends as website animation is promptly becoming an expected feature on most modern websites. The key for successful interface animation is to not overdo it. These should be used to spruce up some commonly used interactions to help make them feel more fun or life like.

Conversation Add-ons – We have all used these at one point or another. These include many website tools that consumers use on a daily basis such as chatbots and interactive advisers. The development of these add-ons focuses on content so the micro-copywriter will be in high demand for web developers in 2017. Those writers that can inject a dose of humour and personality into the chatbot interfaces will most definitely be sought after.

The Aesthetic Experience – The perfect aesthetic experience is often created with minimalistic design and this focuses on avoiding cluttered web pages by selecting the most relevant copy coupled with carefully chosen images. This is to create the perfect visual experience for the individual that visits your site. Additionally, the web page has to load quickly and with minimal fuss.

Virtual Reality – The VR industry came on leaps and bounds in 2016 and out of all our web design trends, this one may take the longest to reach its full potential. However, we expect some key developments within the VR market this year and soon enough web development will focus on site optimisation for VR devices. Soon a whole new set of tools and development strategies will be in place for designing VR-friendly websites. Watch this space.